Wednesday 30 April 2014

Psychiatric Drug Facts with Dr. Peter Breggin - Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008)

Psychiatric Drug Facts with Dr. Peter Breggin - Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008)



"The scientific premise of the book is that all psychiatric treatments—drugs, electroshock and lobotomy—have their 'therapeutic' impact by disabling the brain. They do not improve brain function or correct biochemical imbalances, they cause brain dysfunction and biochemical imbalances. These brain-disabling interventions are then considered effective when the doctor, family, patient or society views impaired brain dysfunction in the target individuals as a desirable or beneficial effect. Because psychiatric drugs in reality do more harm than good, the psychopharmaceutical complex must devote billions of dollars to exerting its power and influence in the political, professional and public arenas.

Crappy Ayahuasca Shamans Are Making Gap Years Dangerous | VICE United Kingdom

Crappy Ayahuasca Shamans Are Making Gap Years Dangerous | VICE United Kingdom



You turned into a cat? That’s fairly out there. Is that a normal experience?

Transformation into other animals, other plants and other beings is a fairly common experience with ayahuasca. What I needed to break through my ego shell at that point was a powerful influx of energy, and, my god, did that jaguar bring it. Ayahuasca seems to like boas and jaguars. Some people may experience actually becoming a jaguar and going off into the jungle and checking it out. People actually scout – they go out and discover things in the jungle they didn’t know about.

Extreme conditions & extreme states

Extreme conditions & extreme states from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

Nietzsche, history and deep character structure!

The Best of Chopin

Tuesday 29 April 2014

the metaphor of sickness

Prolonged self-satisfaction is never really so great a thing, despite the fact of its being the modern ideal.

Aesthetically and spiritually, I would prefer to treat myself as if I had a certain sickness of lassitude or frailty, whether of the mind or of the body -- and then attempt to heal it.

Shamanic types are those who go deepest in an attempt to heal their minds and bodies.  They don't stop at the body itself but go deeply into historical processes and enchance their understanding of these as well.   They develop means of conceptualising psychodynamics.  They read the meanings of these psychodynamics within their own heads and come to terms with them.

The frenzy of their madness burns holes into reality.   Destruction follows.  Often this is a cleansing destruction.  Steel one's nerves when approaching shamanic writing.    Allow oneself a long recovery period, incase one should need it.  A normative, sealed consciousness, one which is one that has allowed itself to be closed in by its tacit acceptance of social norms, will experience some degree of shock and even initial trauma when its vistas are suddenly ripped open.

The shamanic type is seated on Venus.   You don't want to visit him there unless you can handle the heat and most of us, to be frank, cannot do so.

If you imagine that the shamanic type enjoys being where he is or that he is merely teasing you playfully with his ideas, you couldn't be more wrong.   The shaman has learned to tolerate the heat, but it is almost unrelenting agony.   His or her art reflects that, showing what lies beneath the skin of human consciousness -- the unconscious, unaware raw tissues of our shared reality.

It takes a tremendous amount of energy to write in this vein.   Much of the energy comes from facing the self-destruction that awaits one when one finds one's skin has been ripped off again with the consequence that one is facing reality freshly.

One must also find methods to sustain oneself in the face of incomprehension and critical disapproval.

Since one's points of reference come from looking UNDER the skin of humanity and not, in a normative sense, on top, one will have to get used to people not knowing what one is referring to.  Indeed, they may imagine all ones thoughts and ideas refer to something else entirely, something that is more on the surface, and contains less of an imagination for the ripped off skin revealing the underlying bones and sinews of our daily existence.

Shamanic types know "a few things more" as Nietzsche claimed to know about himself.  But they also know it in different ways that the bulk of humanity, which prefers not to have its flesh ripped off in order to know something.  Even as they attempt to convey their knowledge, the limitations they face are already built-in the fact that what they see and experience is qualitatively different from what the majority experience and notice.   One doesn't notice and perceive the same things if one is situated differently.   This is not the subtle variation of normative conscious minds that we are talking about here, but the fact that shamanic injury produces a completely different category of knowledge in the shaman.  Those who are not injured see and experience the world without the benefit of injury.   On one level, this lack of injury makes them healthy, quite definitively so, but healthy people still do become the victims of malicious pathological forces -- which they do not see coming.   The shamanic type, the one who is "sick", has knowledge of these things even before they arrive.

But there are few he can share them with.   He is, like Marechera like Cassandra.   Nothing he says is really listened to, because he's out of step and kind of "mad".

His madness is the cost he pays for his insights, certainly.   But if humanity doesn't feel it needs his knowledge, all his efforts, written or political, are a waste of time.

And certainly, so long as life is going swimmingly, no person in their right mind feels they need access to shamanic insights.   Not whilst the going isn't tough, at least.............























Intellectual shamanism

The roots of intellectual shamanism, I shall argue, are in the sensibility that deliberately goes against a biological strain of life, by using biological energy not for the selfsame purposes but for exploration of the phenomenological, abstractive and intellectual world.

Monday 28 April 2014

Conservatism vs Liberalism | Clarissa's Blog

Conservatism vs Liberalism | Clarissa's Blog



also, what the hell is it with feeling "special"?  A high quality person is very complex, often, with strong tastes and a strong capacity to stand up for what they believe in.  It would not bother me if they felt they were special or not as this is rather irrelevent to their quality and is an aspect of one's judgement that can be false.

Conservatism vs Liberalism | Clarissa's Blog

Conservatism vs Liberalism | Clarissa's Blog



"For liberals, loyalties are a matter of choice (and fatally, of status). Status for liberals means rejecting those closer to them who are undeserving for whatever reason in favor of those further away and deemed more deserving."



Liberals reject complex and difficult to handle realities (close up relationships) for mental fabrications in their heads about children suffering far away.

On the side of doom

Western society caters to mammalian drives, not philosophy!

Friday 25 April 2014

Subjectivity and the heights and depths of the individual's being

In defence of ugliness and disharmony

Newspaper Predicts Apocalypse, Has Meltdown

Newspaper Predicts Apocalypse, Has Meltdown



From W.A.
Stutchbury told Mumbrella: “The WA edition is the result of a simple error that got through normal quality control and then ended up with an extremely bad result.” “The first thing I want to do is to apologise to Western Australian readers of The Australian Financial Review for the obviously unacceptable state of the front page of their paper this morning. It is an extreme one-off and we are going through our processes to make sure it does not happen again.”

Thursday 24 April 2014

The shamanic void

I will write a bit later about the shamanic void and how that affects people --- because I think really, really truthful writing is in a way helpless writing, showing how little of reality we actually control. Of course most people try to defensively stage manage their lives....which is an attempt to ward off the shamanic void.

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Thursday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog



With regard to the woman producing a film on her father, I would say that not everything is necessarily an electra complex, although in some cases it might be.  In my case, however, my father moved very much into my own psychological space and kept conducting raids on it.  Consequently, he was very much in my space through much of my early adult life and in terms of the legacy he left even later.   So I wrote about it.   Clearly, he had not received enough nurturing from his mother in his early years for him to maintain a separate identity of his own when under stress.  So I felt incredibly emotionally blackmailed to be his mother, and tried to deal with that as best I could.  I would think it rather sad if people labeled my own state as pathological, just because I was dealing with extremely difficult circumstances at the time.  Traditional wisdom is that if someone thinks they are drowning and grabs onto you, you should slap them hard to restore them to their senses, otherwise both of you will drown toegether.   That can be very difficult to do.

The shamanic wound


The meaning of the shamanic wound -- or what Bataille terms "impalement" -- is that it forces a break with the biological as the principle of structuring reality.  Shamans don't care for progeneration, as a rule.

But looked at from the other direction, allowing one's life to be driven by organic, biological principles feeds into a determinism not unlike that which afflicts dead matter.  After all, the human life cycle is predictable and, in a deadening and deadly sense, rather normative.

To break with the structure of biological determinism releases energy.  The deterministic flow of life may stop but the individual him- or herself becomes vitalized.

That is why I think the current trend toward biologism (seeing everything in the light of the inevitability of progeneration) is negative.  So long as one's energies are travelling along these normative, predetermined pathways, one cannot even understand the meanings that shamanic types are trying to impart.





Modalities of sacrifice

Wednesday 23 April 2014

Subjectivity

To me, subjectivity has always much to do with the development of one's sense of beauty, line, harmony.   I do not see it as the same as having an opinion.   No doubt about it, I have always been late in having opinions anyway, because they seemed rather ugly, crude excrescences, without any explicable rhyme or reason.  They were simply there.  And they mostly belonged to other people.  And I had to deal with them.   But mostly they got in the way of my attempt to see the underlying connections between things.   There were structural connections and there were causal connections and there were connections that either maintained or disrupted harmony -- or reorganised it.   These took a while to see, but they were worth the work, because everything became richer when one understood these semi-hidden factors.

So it was that I developed my subjectivity.

But then, much later I learned that I had taken an unusual path.  When most people spoke of subjectivity, what they meant was their crude, untrained opinion.  For instance, I might instantly take a dislike to someone because of some feature on their face, or the way they disappointed my ideals, or because they don't look like they belong here.

To be able to be arbitary and rampant in the face of fate and to feel that anything one feels and wants to express is automatically justified -- this is what most people understand by "subjectivity".

And there are others who view the term almost entirely pejoratively, as they consider themselves to be objectivists, only interested in the facts.   But, if they're only interested in the facts, then they have no option but to measure, ascertain and give all credence to others basic opinions, since these are obvious facts.  That is to say, in the contemporary world, everybody has an opinion.

The most objective types are those who bow down to the force of others' untrained, undirected and unthought-through opinions.  For instance, hammering down on asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is the pattern of those who recognise that a strong train of opinion must certainly be catered to.   Anyone who succeeds in politics these days must submit to this measure of objectivity.
 
Ultimately, then, objectivity and extreme but untrained opinionatedness are one and the same in that they lead in the same direction -- Only, one is on a micro level and the other then appears as a broader political fact.

"Blood debt"

Don't fight yourself

Predictions | Clarissa's Blog

Predictions | Clarissa's Blog





This would be a movement toward more narcissism, or what in Western culture we have come to understand as the project of constantly building and shoring up "self-esteem".  



I actually anticipate a movement away from this tendency, although probably also a schisming  , as people realize that they can survive materially and even socially on less than they had imagined they would have needed.



So on one side of society, you would have these overwrought childish types, who become more apolitical as they conflate their own feelings and sensations with politics.  On the other, you will have those who are almost completely self-reliant and have learned to make do with as little input from "society" as possible.



Meanwhile there will be some massive winners and tyrants who suck up all the power and try to create fiefdoms.

The extremities of experience (out of Africa)

The shamanic type's absorption of EVIL

"Master Morality" (NOT a walk in the park!)

SHAMANISM AS A METAPHOR

Tuesday 22 April 2014

To the new left

I have linked psychological states with political outcomes.  But most have been resistant to what I've had to say, because it affects their self-esteem.

Of course it does!  All stages of learning involve having to manage our self-esteem as we realize how little it is we know and how much more we have to develop.  But not listening -- whilst is may preserve your illusions -- leads to succumbing to exactly that which I had warned you about.  Your psychological naivete leads directly to your being politically dominated by all sorts of unscupulous fellows.

Don't think I didn't warn you about this.  But do realize that you put priority on maintaining your self esteem, rather than looking more deeply into the nature of your illusions.

You have commanded that I spend many years looking very deeply indeed into the nature of my own political, moral and historical illusions -- and I have done so.   I've also learned a great deal about the link between psychological states and power structures in the process.   But now that I know all this, it's much easier to see that the majority of people remain stuck at the level of being concerned only with the sensations they have about themselves.  The whole of new left politics is predicated around the need that certain downpressed people feel, to elevate their self esteem.

But I cannot do that!  You must do it on your own.  And after that, when you feel strong enough, it is imperative to make the link between your acceptance of political domination and the nature of your psychological states.   That is work you must do on your own -- or else, succumb to the politics of resentment by voting out left-leaning encumbents because you are not totally satisfied with a less than completely submissive, morally-motherly figure.

You vote in order to enhance your self-esteem, but your actions are an endless well of negativity.  You can't achieve a political outcome that way.   Politics is one thing and self-esteem is another, but you insist on confounding the two, to the extent that a government of the extreme right seems preferable to you than one who fractionally transgresses your pristine morality.

I'm no longer going to promote your right to self-deception, not even when you crave it, like mother's milk, because I will not be your vehicle for self-delusion and political captivation.  You need to work it out for yourselves.

If you are lowly and feel lowly, well, I can see why.  It's because of what you continually insist on doing to yourselves, which is to punish others on your side for not being perfect enough for you.  Well, that is why you are in the mess you are in.

But you have nobody to blame for this but yourselves.  And stop blaming others.  Get over yourselves.




The Pain of Transformation | Clarissa's Blog

The Pain of Transformation | Clarissa's Blog

Bataille's suggestion is that everybody ought to experiment with themselves by going to the limits of their being.  Because, one only knows what one's morality is when one is on the retreat from the scary possibilities of a completely open-ended reality.  One defines oneself when one says, "No", and succumbs to one's limits.  But that a really important experiment to do and very necessary for self-knowledge, otherwise one may be under all sorts of illusions about oneself.

http://musteryou.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/ruinous-desire/

Monday 21 April 2014

Repost: Induction into mindless conformity?

A lack of imagination and grit

5 Ways American Policies and Attitudes Make Us Lonely, Anxious, and Antisocial | Alternet



Her sex life will probably suffer. A  recent Swiss study discovered that men and women facing job insecurity are 53 and 47 percent more likely, respectively, to experience low sexual desire than men and women who have secure jobs.
I fear for people who allow their sex drives to be bestowed from the outside. This is fundamental, people. It has to come exclusively from within.

Sunday 20 April 2014

When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men | Alternet

When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men | Alternet


Yet the times were clearly changing. In 1891, H. Fehling tried to debunk the common wisdom: “It is an altogether false idea that a young woman has just as strong an impulse to the opposite sex as a young man.... The appearance of the sexual side in the love of a young girl is pathological." In 1896, Bernhard Windscheid postulated, “In the normal woman, especially of the higher social classes, the sexual instinct is acquired, not inborn; when it is inborn, or awakes by itself, there is abnormality. Since women do not know this instinct before marriage, they do not miss it when they have no occasion in life to learn it."

Saturday 19 April 2014

Modalities of sacrifice

Women and Confidence | Clarissa's Blog

Women and Confidence | Clarissa's Blog



Those women are just very passive, as are many Australian women and quite a few white Zimbabwean women, but in different ways.  At the same time, when one has been ideologically, which is to say psychologically hobbled, one becomes alarmed at what it means to assert oneself.  Ideology creates a balance, not just in terms of one's own psychology but in relation to societal expectations.  So to go against one'd ideological conditioning can feel like losing the balance and walking into dangerous situations.

Modernity | Clarissa's Blog

Modernity | Clarissa's Blog





All cultures carry a degree of feudalism and ideas from different eras into the present.  Capitalism would surely die if we were to not have these pre-existing structures of desire.  For instance, consider martial arts.  The origin of all the arts is totally feudalistic. And we continue to bow as we enter the doors of the dojos.  Consider marriage -- the basis a huge capitalist industry and  yet based on the principles of patriarchy and woman ownership.  Consider fashion -- it comes from the French and other aristocratic courts.  Etc.



It's very naive to think we have totally transcended the past, or even that it would be desirable to have done so.

Friday 18 April 2014

The Danger of the Monster Myth | White Ribbon Campaign

The Danger of the Monster Myth | White Ribbon Campaign


The monster myth allows us to see public infractions on women’s sovereignty as minor, because the man committing the infraction is not a monster like Bayley. We see instances of this occur in bars when men become furious and verbally abusive to, or about, women who decline their attention. We see it on the street as groups of men shout comments, grab, grope and intimidate women with friends either ignoring or getting involved in the activity. We see it in male peer groups where rape-jokes and disrespectful attitudes towards women go uncontested. The monster myth creates the illusion that this is simply banter, and sexist horseplay. While most of us would never abide racist comments among a male peer-group, the trivialisation of men’s violence against women often remains a staple, invidious, and rather boring subject of mirth. We can either examine this by setting our standards against the monster-rapist, or by accepting that this behaviour intrinsically contributes to a culture in which rape and violence are allowed to exist.

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Projection Rules | Clarissa's Blog

Projection Rules | Clarissa's Blog



She is wrong that somen would not get married if men did not earn enough.  There are a lot of very high earning animals, like racehorses, of course, the women could marry.  And if women earned as much as men, why, they could marry each other.  Suitable -- which is to say high earning -- mates are everywhere you look around.

Saturday 12 April 2014

From Judt on Fascist Rhetoric | Clarissa's Blog

From Judt on Fascist Rhetoric | Clarissa's Blog



I think when the psyche is very brittle, you do need to take a black and white approach, simply because a slight mistake with a compromise could change the psychological margins for you in a significant way, such that instead of staying on the side of sanity, you go mad, or lose your health, or get in with the wrong crowd and die.



I think this kind of redemptive radicalism is often mistaken for fascism by those who have never had to fight for themselves in this way.

Thursday 10 April 2014

Cambridge microbiologist Robert Barlow dies penniless in Liverpool after his benefits were withdrawn - despite him needing a new heart | Cambridge News | Latest News Headlines From Cambridge City & Cambridgeshire | National News | Cambridge News

Cambridge microbiologist Robert Barlow dies penniless in Liverpool after his benefits were withdrawn - despite him needing a new heart | Cambridge News | Latest News Headlines From Cambridge City & Cambridgeshire | National News | Cambridge News


Mrs Westland added: “Robert was dying and he accepted that. I feel he should have been left to enjoy what little time he had left.”
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says Mr Barlow initially challenged the decision to stop his benefits but the appeal was withdrawn – because, according to Mrs Westland, he felt too ill to fight the case.


Read more: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Cambridge-microbiologist-Robert-Barlow-dies-penniless-in-Liverpool-after-his-benefits-were-withdrawn-despite-him-needing-a-new-heart-20140409063051.htm#ixzz2yXow8ob0

Tuesday 8 April 2014

The intellectual blood debt which is owed to the other


The intellectual blood debt which is owed to the other from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.
We don't tend to think of our identities as being historically entangled in other identities, even identities of enmity, to whom we owe a blood debt for their honesty and forthrightness in relation to us.

Monday 7 April 2014

Join the green army

Miracles do happen says Malaysia transport minister over Flight MH370 | News.com.au

Miracles do happen says Malaysia transport minister over Flight MH370 | News.com.au



well finding stuff could happen, but not living folk

Trigger Warnings and Hypocrisy | Clarissa's Blog

Trigger Warnings and Hypocrisy | Clarissa's Blog




Yes, well this could be good commentary. Part of the syndrome of lazy intellectual processing is to imply that everything in life comes down to a simple division between left (progressives) and right (conservatives). That is enormously lazy.

I actually can’t decipher American articles, except to notice certain tendencies of this sort. I’m never sure how concretely or practically true the content might be.

That Asshole Is You | Clarissa's Blog

That Asshole Is You | Clarissa's Blog



If you bring a case of actual patriarchal aggression to the attention of a feminist, and it is the slightest bit complicated or you express anguish over how to act, they will dismiss you as being not at all feminist, because you did not take the easy way out, which is moral condemnation and self-righteous posturing.  It's those qualities they identify readily with "feminism".  But to try to understand something more deeply, or to try to handle things without laying the blame, even whilst still intellectually identifying patriarchal dynamics as the enemy and this they will reject..



Instead, they demand extreme emotionality and great moral posturing as proof of a "feminist" identity.

facing death/creativity and the healthy mind

select to enlarge

Sunday 6 April 2014

MH37O: Angus Houston confirms signal detected by Ocean Shield are consistent with black box | Herald Sun

MH37O: Angus Houston confirms signal detected by Ocean Shield are consistent with black box | Herald Sun

shamanic self-knowledge

The shamanic position is inevitably and definitively naive*.  Bataille said of Nietzsche that one can only understand his writing as a complete disorientation and dissolution of thought, with the imperative to reorient oneself to the world again.  One can see how this works in the case of Nietzsche as the destruction of a religious worldview, with what he terms the "death of God" necessitates a revision of everything one had previously held to be true.  An ongoing project of revaluing all values is imperative just so that one may continue to live in the world and feel one is doing so realistically.

A temporary state of madness, or what Nietzsche seems to hold as an unhealthy disorientation toward the world is followed by a period of recovery, where one is an invalid who nonetheless is reaching for a foothold.   The loss of ones worldview can be fatal and (take it from me) is an extremely unhealthy state to experience, both in terms of the mind and the body.  Nonetheless, if one can recover from this maddening state, one is automatically stronger.

It is remarkably difficult, however, to recover from a complete loss of one's worldview.  There is always the possibility that the struggle to recover oneself will take such a toll on mind and body that a deeper kind of traumatic illness will make its way into one's bones and one will die before one's time.  Nothing is assured in this whole process of accepting loss and attempting recovery.

I used to take the approach where I used other people as radar beacons and effectively beamed my ideas off them to see how they would react.  That seemed to be a way to find out where I might fit in the totally new world I'd moved to after having been ripped out of my place of origin at the age of 15.

Honest engagement was extremely necessary, but equally hard to come by, as in most cases one has done the ordinary foundational work in any particular culture by the time one has reached one's mid-teens.  Except this was not the case for me.  I'd done a totally different foundational work.  It was as if I'd studied for a maths exam and then had to take an English exam.   I felt like a ridiculous person.   In a way, I hated myself, while in another way I revered myself that at least I knew so much about maths.

But what I couldn't do without was other people's reactions.  "How am I improving in my English?  Are all of the remedial lessons paying off?  Is anything I'm saying starting to make a little bit of sense?"

Many people took the opportunity to feed me a lot of misinformation, because obviously I must be putting them on.  We all tend to make the assumption that others generally know as much or as little as we do about the important facts of life.  Our brains naturalise our accumulated knowledge so that it seems we have always had it.  Furthermore, we do not experience the sensation that we all enjoy very specific types of knowledge, due to the naturalisation tactics of our brains.  Being part of a unified culture makes us view what we share with others who are similar to us for historical reasons as the entirety of knowledge that can be obtained.  After all, othe majority of one's mental actions overlap with those who have had the same cultural background as oneself and a similar range of accumulated experiences.

Those who go mad through no fault of their own know something different.  They know from their own hardships that the overlap of knowledge between your mind and mine might be much smaller than either of us would like to fathom.   Since we both want to naturalise our knowledge set and make it seem to be universal, we both struggle against any indication that any part of our knowledge could be relative, indeed a product of historical contingencies.

The weaker party ends up by becoming batlike, learning to cope with cultural blindness by flying by radar.  I've been an invalid of this sort for too many years:  blinded and resorting to secondary forms of awareness.

But Nietzsche and Bataille and anyone who has known complete disruption harmonize with me.  They are, indeed, discordant beings, who give hints as to how to find one's way out of the mess, or totally calamity.

Maturity in the shamanic sense is to no longer need to build one's knowledge.  One has enough, now, to orient oneself effectively and with a sense of emotional satisfaction.

Knowledge, after all, is also emotional knowledge.  Where are the watering holes so that one can revive?  If one is batlike, one has to discover these before too much time has already passed, or otherwise one weakens perhaps permanently.

I was able to find a few, but for two decades it was always a hardship to maintain these.

I've had to do all sorts of things in the backwards order and in the wrong ways.  I've often been poisoned by the wrong waters, but how is one to know unless one tries them?

I understand, now, at least my own territory -- what is poison to me and what is not.

Maturity is harder to achieve when one brings oneself up, but it is at least, in a sense, fuller, since one does not take the word of the authorities for truth but tests everything oneself.

One feels beyond grateful, having made it to this point, to those who gave a great deal of their knowledge in a way that helped instead of hindered.

The level of desperation one has one one does not know things is frightening and extreme.  But self-knowledge brings satisfaction -- no matter how long its accumulation takes.

----

* While the noble man lives for himself with trust and candour (gennaios, meaning "of noble birth" stresses the nuance "upright" and also probably "naïve"), the man of resentment is neither upright nor naïve, nor honest and direct with himself. His soul squints. His spirit loves hiding places, secret paths, and back doors. 
[emphasis added] http://nietzsche.classicauthors.net/GenealogyMorals/GenealogyMorals10.html

That Asshole Is You | Clarissa's Blog

That Asshole Is You | Clarissa's Blog



There's a very apt meme put out on Facebook by some folks calling themselves "Urban Intellectuals".  Actually the group seems to be African Americans as it were.  The poster says, "I'm not interested in what others are saying about me.  I'm more interested in why they were so comfortable saying it to you."



Certainly if someone wants to play to both sides of an issue, their actions do become obvious to a skilled observer.  I wasn't able to articulate it before, but I knew a colleague at work was playing to both sides when she said, "I only told them what they NEEDED to know [about you]."  Then I knew immediately that she had told them what she thought they ought to know about me to make herself look relatively good by comparison.  After all, there is nothing about my private life the bosses NEEDED to know.



But so it goes.  Some people are cowards.  As for me, I now understand how this game is played, so I am particularly dangerous.

Ships zero in on search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Indian Ocean | Travel | Travel News and Holiday Deals | | Herald Sun

Ships zero in on search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Indian Ocean | Travel | Travel News and Holiday Deals | | Herald Sun

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog

Sunday Link Encyclopedia and Self-Promotion | Clarissa's Blog


Anyway: as regards Western feminism, it is worth disregarding for the most part, just because people of a middle class and higher bent require that no psychological anguish of an ongoing or warlike sort should be required, in operations against oneself, to rid oneself over time of the patriarchal lurgy.  They walk around condescending and lecturing to others because this is simply easier than looking at a very ugly thing and seeing the tentacles of it inside themselves.



Some cretin lectured me tonight about the basics of structuralist thinking and how masculinity is a construct, which, they assert, is based on hostility to women.  It can be so and it often is -- but it is an amateur's mistake in thinking to maintain that something is always and necessarily so.   It's also absurd to lecture me with the assumption that I don't know what I'm talking about.  An aging aunt or priestly fellow might do that.



Also if one has already done the gruesome work of extracting patriarchy, then why would one submit to a maiden aunt just because she began yelling?  The assumption about moral laziness is extremely insulting.



I think that when Western feminists start to pay close attention to what I am really saying, rather than what they think I am saying, they will be just beginning to reach the point where they can treat women as people.  But the ability to listen to the actual content and not to disregard it as mere ideology, takes an intense degree of intellectual rigor and moral courage.  Don't expect it from those who embrace an ideology of feminism because they want to make their lives easier by appealing to an ideology

Friday 4 April 2014

Clarity: blood debt Vs the christian moral agenda

free sparring

Thursday 3 April 2014

All comments on Repost: Induction into mindless conformity? - YouTube

All comments on Repost: Induction into mindless conformity? - YouTube


Well I also have a huge superego, but it works differently. I think it is the internalization of the soldier mentality. I always feel like I have to watch myself incase I make a minor mistake which leads to death. For instance, last night I dreamed a cat jumped into a microwave oven and I pushed a button to open the door and let it out, but instead ending up cooking the cat for several seconds. So I live in fear of making these very, very minor mistakes, believing them to have huge consequences. In a real crisis, though, I am exceedingly calm and come into my own. I become a good, psychological combat machine. But one does need to train and discipline the superego during normal working hours.

To say more, "transgression" enables us to crash through our superego boundaries, but I have a feeling this becomes more and more dangerous the more we age. Still, it is a way of renewing ourselves and returning to youth as much as possible. We simply have to do that which our superego expressly forbids us to do.

the end of a road

I find Bataille's spiritual remedy to be good. One has to develop a very strong ego until the point that one sees through everything so much that one no longer needs to put up psychological, economic and political barriers to defend the ego. The strong ego has no value in itself, but it enables you to see through all the ego tricks that people use to gain power, after a time. For me, it has taken nearly thirty years. You've got to fall for a lot of tricks to gain immunity to them. The strong ego enables you to rebuild and go forth anew. But then ultimately the whole idea of creating a persona or identity rather than being your natural self seems ludicrous. What does one want from others anyway, that one has not already taken? The time comes to discard the limits of the ego for the sake of a purer experience of being. This is difficult. It takes a lot of confrontation with the weirdness within oneself and with one's fears. The "blood debt" video really marks the end of a very long journey for me, since I was finally able to articulate something I had not been able to express for twenty years.

Plagiarism as Welcome Relief | Clarissa's Blog

Plagiarism as Welcome Relief | Clarissa's Blog



I once encountered a book in my local newsagency called "How to write fast whil[st] writing well."  http://www.amazon.com/Write-Fast-While-Writing-Well/dp/0898797381

This was way back in my twenties when I was naive and silly -- so I bought the book.

I read it all the way through, and the sentences sure seemed to cling together and to the other sentences and paragraphs in a logical way.  But afterwards, after having read the book, I was left with the impression that I had read nothing.  The words seemed to evaporate from my mind leaving no impression.

Then I realized what the problem was with writing fast.  You can, in fact, have a logical construction to your ideas and mechanically correct grammar, but the content doesn't stick with the reader if the book is written fast.  The opposite to a quickly written book would be Nietzsche's meditations, which stick with you a long time, even after you think you have forgotten what you read.

I believe I learned a great lesson from this about the kind of writing and thinking I want to engage in.   Even if it takes twenty years to get an idea quite right, you need to keep working on crafting it.  Time doesn't matter.  Only the quality of the ideas you have really matter.  Also, it doesn't matter if the audience doesn't quite 'get it'.  If you have quality to your ideas, some sense of what you had to say will stick with them.  They may never completely get the full gist of your concepts, but they will likely come away richer through the engagement with them.

That means that everything is at least following the right trajectory.

And furthermore, the latest theory on MH370 is that everybody was poisoned by Asian fruit.  Isn't that a far more consoling notion than the fact that they died violently by plunging into the ocean?  I'm not sure, but it may be.


Repost: emotional blackmail to induce mindless conformity

Conflictive Marriages | Clarissa's Blog

Conflictive Marriages | Clarissa's Blog


That’s a kind common thing isn’t it, known as “first world problems”? I would say that the main barrier to communication I’ve experienced is the assumption I am talking about first world problems, when I am not. For instance, fear for one’s life and health becomes ‘hurt feelings’. And so on.

Repost: emotional blackmail to induce mindless conformity

Wednesday 2 April 2014

So Freud wasn't quite right, but other forces are at work?

Map Of The Developing Human Brain Shows Where Problems Begin : Shots - Health News : NPR

This is even better than when my horse fell on me.

WHEN ONE LOSES EVERYTHING AND IS ERASED

WHEN ONE LOSES EVERYTHING AND IS ERASED from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

It's not a common experience, fortunately, but here is what it feels like. This relates to my book, MINUS THE MORNING, set in Africa. A memoir.

Generational indebtedness

Generational indebtedness from Jennifer Frances Armstrong on Vimeo.

It is noble and self-aware to understand our generational indebtedness.

Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370: The Trillion Dollar Question to the U.S. and Its Intelligence Services | Global Research

Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370: The Trillion Dollar Question to the U.S. and Its Intelligence Services | Global Research


Erich Shih, chief reporter at Chinese-language military news monthly Defense International, said the US has more and better satellites but has not taken part in the search for flight MH370, which disappeared about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of March 8 with 239 people on board. Shih claimed that the US held back because it wanted to see what information China’s satellites would provide.





I love a good piece of conspiracy theory and this is well thought-out.

"Blood debt"


What does it mean to feel an obligation to repay a "blood debt"? Certainly we CAN stand on the shoulders of previous generations, but not if we lose our bearings and become oriented towards the nearest cheapest "purchase". Contemporary Christianity has even turned Jesus into a cheap commodity without a price, by wilfully not understanding the blood debt of sacrifice, but someone who knows about PRIMEVAL notions, like Georges Bataille, goes so much deeper.

 Another point to consider is that one simply has to MAP the world emotionally in some way. The Christians map it in a particular way, but by believing that only the guilty suffer, which are not the "real" Christians (who are redeemed), they end up succumbing to guilt when the suffer. The blood debt notion gives you a different way to structure the moral universe that enhances the subjectivity of the individual.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Nietzsche, history and deep character structure!

Scientists have found that memories may be passed down through generations in our DNA | UTAOT


New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.


Professor Marcus Pembrey, a paediatric geneticist at University College London, said the work provided “compelling evidence” for the biological transmission of memory.
He added: “It addresses constitutional fearfulness that is highly relevant to phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders, plus the controversial subject of transmission of the ‘memory’ of ancestral experience down the generations.
“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.
“I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”

contemporary feminists

Tuesday Bad Link Encyclopedia | Clarissa's Blog



Yes, Cliff -- you can't gain much benefit from liaising with contemporary feminists, because supposing you do not evince a feminine moral superiority in their eyes, they will pull you down faster than your worst enemy. You have to maintain an extreme femininity, whilst also proclaiming your victimhood. Otherewise they start taking stabs at you. It's better and healthier to sit around with those who will state plainly that they disagree with you than to have one of these slippery monsters cuddle up and then attack.

Malaysia releases transcript of last words from missing plane

Malaysia releases transcript of last words from missing plane

Tuesday Bad Link Encyclopedia | Clarissa's Blog

Tuesday Bad Link Encyclopedia | Clarissa's Blog:



'via Blog this'



I think the weight watchers video is more offensive not for leaving out the fat people but because the women represented don't seem to do anything except exist and this is deemed incredible.   This is why, when women try to achieve something that may be more significant than just existing, people pat them on the head and say, "But look!  You existed!  Here's a boost to your self-esteem:  You are incredible!"



On Facebook, I was recently invited to some kind of group called "The whole woman" and there was a subtitle to it as well, something relating to exuberance and self-esteem.   Consequently, I made a site called "the regressive woman: mutiliation and despair."  Nowadays, though, because people have lost touch with both irony and cynicism, which are modes of transcending extreme superficiality, I will be suspected to be a mad and mutilating woman.   But it is clear why these readings come about.   It's because by just existing, we women deserve to be deemed marvellous and amazing survivors.  We could even "survive" our first kiss, so long as it was not on an aircraft destined to plummet into the ocean never to be seen again.  



Why work to create something tough or difficult to understand at first glance when you can just latch onto some motif of womanly wholeness and spriteliness out of thin air?



I survived some deeply troubling interactions with humans, and I know I can drop a few pounds as anything is possible at all, after interactions with humans.

Cultural barriers to objectivity